The Tunieblog

Twitter Asks: What's The Difference Between A Duck?

2011-09-24T11:55:00.001-04:00

This is a mashup of awesome photos from bradleypjohnson and Auntie P

Question asked at a recent social media seminar: What gets you more follows on Twitter, using hashtags or posting links? The questioner was in charge of her company's social media presence, and said she was anticipating this question from internal stakeholders.

The speaker was a bit flummoxed by the question, kinda like he'd been asked, "Do you still beat your wife?" or "What's the difference between a duck?" He did his on-the-spot best, but you could tell he knew something was wrong with the question. I couldn't quite figure it out at the moment, either.

After some thought, here it is:

That's like asking, "Do I make more friends when I wear high heels and a cocktail dress, or spike shoes and a golf outfit?"

Well, it depends on whether you're at a holiday gala or a golf outing.

Twitter isn't a system that you can game with metrics, hashtags and links. To quote Scott Stratten (I quote this a lot), Twitter Is People.

Use hashtags when hashtags make sense. Post links when they're relevant and of interest. That's what gets you followed.

Twitter is a lot like real-life networking, whether you're tweeting as an individual or a company. Dress appropriately, be nice, introduce yourself, listen well, try to be interesting, and when you can, be helpful without expecting anything in return.

Don't get me wrong, traditional marketers, it was a great question!

And the best answer is to question the question.

Chris Barger Reflects On 4 Years of Social Media At GM

2011-04-17T21:42:00.033-04:00

Chris Barger Sums Up His GM Experience

I had an incredible opportunity to hear Christopher Barger, GM's outgoing head of social media, tell the story of how he built GM's much admired social media program.

He spoke to the Ann Arbor Ad Club, and afterward I had the opportunity to join him for dinner, along with our hosts from re:group, the Ann Arbor agency who sponsored the talk, and re:group's David Murray (@DaveMurr), whose friendship with Chris was instrumental in persuading him to share his experiences with us.

Chris' Social Media Journey

Chris is a social media pioneer: he started out at IBM where, as a PR guy with a personal blog, he was tapped to bring IBM into social media. This was way back in 2004. It's a great story, and better told by Jennifer Leggio on the ZDNet blog.

From IBM, Chris went to GM.

The giant automaker kept calling him, but Barger said he had zero interest in moving to Detroit. Finally, GM said come on out and visit, and if you still say no, we won't bother you any more. Read more...

He arrived in Detroit on a dirty gray December day. He was not impressed. Then something interesting happened: the more Detroiters he met and talked to, the more he liked Detroit. He started to think this might be a real opportunity.

One top exec, asked what he expected Barger to do, said "I expect you to scare the @#!! out of me every day". That's when Chris knew he wanted the job.

He knew that he would have license to push the company, and even though he knew not every suggestion would be implemented, he had the official sanction to move ahead at full speed.

Just barely two weeks before he spoke to us, he accepted a position with Voce Connect, a west coast social and content marketing firm with clients PlayStation, eBay and Yahoo. Voce in turn was recently acquired by global PR giant Porter Novelli. Barger's new duties will take him to PN offices around the world, integrating his and Voce's expertise in social into the agency's operations.

And one of his conditions for accepting the job was that he could still live in Detroit!

Here are some things Chris shared with us, both in the presentation and afterward over dinner...

The State of Corporate Social Media

Chris Barger: Rock Stars vs. Doers

When big companies do move into social, get out of the way. They have the resources and the firepower to ramp up fast and do it right.

Social media gurus are on the way out as actual corporate social media practitioners begin to push the field forward.

They days of gurus telling corporate practitioners what to do will soon be over.

The media-anointed gurus do not understand how to deal with real organizational challenges like: educating C-level executives who don't get it, HR and Legal raising alarms and roadblocks, and departmental turf wars.

How To Do Social Media While Addressing Corporate Realities

Barger had a 5 year plan to bring GM into social media and bring social media into the fabric of GM's communications. He accomplished what he set out to do in a little over 4 years. (As a casual watcher of automakers in the social space, I was impressed with the speed and power with which GM pulled into a leadership position!)

To succeed, you need a C-level champion who can flatten resistance.

You have to embrace HR and Legal and work with them to address their concerns. (I needed to hear this, since my instinct is, "Can we send Legal and HR on a two week cruise while we roll this out?")

Once an organization really embraces social media, it's inevitable that there will be turf wars among departments over ownership of social.

Part of Barger's internal strategy for GM was "Immerse and Disperse"... a program where key people from other departments were tapped to do a one year stint on the social media team. With the depth of understanding they gained, these people were able to disseminate social thinking throughout their home departments.

Social media goals must align with company sales goals. Instead of pushing the hybrid Volt in social, which might resonate well with the audience, they aligned with Chevy's goals to promote the subcompact Cruze.

A good ratio of promotional messaging to real, human conversation is 50/50.

Chris Shares Some Stories

Think small audiences as well as large... Barger's team equipped a group of Florida food bloggers with Chevys and sent them on a Pizza Crawl. This paid off well in positive publicity from this group of bloggers with relatively small, but devoted, followings. The Pizza Crawl has since been brought to other cities.

Which demonstrates that Social Media for business is really the equivalent of personal networking, like in a small town where all transactions are relationship based. It makes the world a small town, and makes personal relationships with the brand possible.

When Chris took his key people, and of course some cars, to SXSW, it was a big success in terms of making GM relevant to this highly influential audience. However, there was some reaction to this internally along the lines of "Oh, Chris is just taking his team to a party". But it made sense to bring the people who already "got it" and were connected at SXSW, adding credibility to GM's presence.

When things Go Wrong in Social

The recent Chrysler Twitter gaffe, while awful, created an opportunity: for a moment, they had everyone's attention. When you have a chance to talk to your audience, use it. Chrysler could have asked, "What are your favorite and least favorite places to drive?"

The Chryslers mistweet could have been prevented with better training of the agency employees who were tweeting for Chrysler.

When representing a company in the social space, you always have to watch what you say... even in your own accounts. Chris was highly conscious of the fact that even when tweeting as @cbarger, he still represented GM.

Later, he elaborated. In this world of phone cameras, instant sharing, and a blogger behind every bush, Barger operates on the assumption that anything he says is public. He often refrains from expressing strong personal convictions, even when he's dying to. But if it's inappropriate for GM to say, it's inappropriate for him to say.

When people were trashing GM in social media about their loan repayment announcement last year (GM repaid their government bailout money ahead of schedule) Chris fought within the company to respond. The traditional PR approach, "Don't address it, and it will die down", prevailed. The result was a lost opportunity to send an alternative message... and stickiness of the anti-GM sentiment in the achived web.

Later, I asked Barger to tell me more. The prevailing thinking was that with a congressional hearing on Wall Street's TARP bailout on the near horizon, interest in the GM loan repayment would evaporate. This is classic PR. But the TARP hearings played into the negative sentiment, making it worse.

We talked about how responding isn't so much about convincing these particular individuals, but influencing people overhearing the conversation. And also giving Google something to serve up now... and in the future... alongside the criticism.

I asked Chris exactly how and to what extent he would have engaged with the loan criticism, given the inherent troll factor.

How would he have responded on behalf of GM? Something along the lines of, "Yes, we did repay the loan, and with interest, and as a taxpayer/shareholder, this is good news for you. You made money!" And then leave it at that... unless you find someone who is truly willing to have a reasonable discourse.

(Anyone else find it absolutely amazing that repaying a loan ahead of time, with interest, while predicting an IPO, can become a PR disaster for a company? There are definitely forces out there handing out rocks to trolls.)

The Trouble With ROI

It's entirely possible to make a sale via Twitter, and Chris has done this several times.

It's also possible to track which social platforms are driving web traffic and how much.

But a little harder to track footprints into the dealership, just as it was with traditional advertising. We can track a lot, but there are gaps where we must infer what happened.

Barger is convinced the ability to map the entire trail to the dealership is not far away. With the increasing sophistication of analytics, we will soon be able to nail down ROI.

GM's Next Steps

GM's next challenge is to drive adoption of social media among the dealers. (Which will be difficult given how cantankerous dealers can be -- this is my experience at Automotive News talking here.)

Barger says that for any company, getting franchisees, dealers, or store managers on board involves education by example. Corporate must show them examples of peers who are doing it right, and the results they are getting.

Some examples: Domino's' Ramon de Leon is doing a great job of promoting his Chicago franchises. Then there's that Ford dealer in Ohio who has abandoned traditional for digital.

Takeaways Galore

I can't stress enough how much I got from Chris's presentation and the wonderful opportunity to spend time with him afterward. He is a treasure trove of insight into the realities of operating effectively within a giant organization.

I totally get Chris' point that pontificating about what companies should do from the ivory tower of a blog or book is easy. Working within an organization to make it happen is hard. The gurus got us thinking and got us started, but the brands will take over from here, thanks.

Social media is entering maturity as a field, and practitioners are now charting the path.

Chris Barger left GM with an effective social media program well-integrated into the company's culture and operations. Which is what he was charged with doing: "I worked myself out of a job!", he says proudly.

He's working on a book about his experience at GM... if tonight's talk is any indication, it's going to be a great read!

Photo Credits: Many thanks to Carter Sherline at Frog Prince Studios in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Lincoln's Mysterious TED@MotorCity Event Kicks Off Auto Show Week

2011-01-11T03:45:00.007-05:00

Last night's stunning TED@MotorCity event, hosted by Lincoln at the Max Fisher Theater in Detroit, was a hit. Themed "New Tomorrows", the event's surprise A-list speakers delivered a succinct roundup of key ideas that will shape the future.

We heard from Thomas Goetz executive editor of WIRED, Dale Dougherty founder of MAKE and the Maker Faire, Craig Newmark of craigslist.org; Detroit poet Jessica Care Moore; Detroit journalist and author John Gallagher; and Lisa Gansky, author of "Meshed".

Poet Jessica Care Moore at TED@MotorCity in Detroit

There was a certain amount of mystery in the lead-up to this event... the invitation that materialized in our mailboxes stressed that it was non-transeferable, and asked,

"Please don't blog or tweet about this event," and "Please do not forward this link."

Really?! I can't make a Twitter avatar banner?

The invite said little about the evening's program, and gave no indication how we got on the list in the first place. So we were all wondering... separately... what the event would be like, who would speak, and who would be there.

Well, the event was first class all the way, with attentive staff, beautiful food, the Lincoln MKX and Lincoln's first-ever hybrid, the MKZ on display and available for test rides on legendary Woodward Avenue. A real Detroit Auto Show party. It was a much smaller crowd than TEDxDetroit, so the event had an intimate feel. And even the artists, makers and geeks dressed up a bit for it. Read more...

The Triumphal March from Aida played as we took our seats, while the heavy doors to the Music Box Theater rolled closed (shades of the final act of that opera... nice touch!). Then Gary Bolles of Xigi kicked things off as Curator of the event.

Craig Newmark talks with Gary Bolles at TED@MotorCity in Detroit

Thomas Goetz, Executive Editor of WIRED Magazine | Goetz informed us that the average lifespan of Americans has dropped, even while modern medicine has gotten more sophisticated. Obviously, a result of our poor health habits.

How about using engaging data reports and dashboards (color and graphics, anyone?) with feedback loops linked to one Big, Ole Satisfying Graphic that goes up and down in response? Get people involved in the metrics that ultimately determine their health.

Thomas used the Toyota Prius as an example: Prius drivers get obsessed with the readout on the dash that tells them the mileage they're getting. It goes up or down in real time in response to the way they are driving. You end up keeping half an eye on that gauge. Driving becomes a game where you strive to engage in the behaviors that increase your mileage. Why not apply that psychology to health behaviors?

I especially liked Goetz's quote, "Designers have this great secret called... color!" To which I would add, smart companies have this great secret called... designers!

Dale Dougherty, Founder of MAKE Magazine and the Maker Faire | You can tell Dale is a Maker because he was grinning from ear to ear the whole time he was on stage. Makers are happy, happy people, because they have so much fun.

(I somehow heard about MAKE early on and ran out and bought the first issue when it hit the newsstand. I love reading about the projects in MAKE and sister magazine CRAFT, where people knit LED lights into sweaters and so forth, although, really, I'd rather just knit a scarf. But that just proves that Making is a spectator sport.)

Dougherty pointed out that a few generations ago, it was normal to be a hands-on maker; now Makers are considered a bit on the fringes. But really, we're all Makers, it's an essential part of human nature, and we need to mainstream it again. And get Making back into schools. (Temple Grandin said the same thing when she spoke in Ann Arbor in September.) And encourage Maker hives, hacker spaces and Maker Faires in our communities. Yeah!

By the end of Dale's talk, with slides of motorized cupcakes, we were all grinning ear to ear.

(Check out Ann Arbor's Makerspace AHA! (All Hands Active))

John Gallagher, Author and Architecture Critic at the Detroit Free Press | John described the genesis of urban sprawl in the primordial soup of cheap gas, and called for a return to communities that allow us to live where we work and play.

Gallagher encouraged us to think of the open spaces in Detroit as a blank canvas, then picture...

Light rail, walkable neighborhoods, and inclusive roadways that allow for motorized and non-motorized transportation. Urban farming, for access to fresh, healthful produce, and for the reduced environmental impact of locally grown food. And linear parks, daylighted streams, and turning run down buildings over to artists. Hell, yeah!

Some European cities are doing these things, with success, and we need to adopt the Euros' "Let's try it" mentality.

(I spoke with John after the talk and told him about The Woodward Project on YouTube. Please, watch this excellent presentation of Detroit's descent into sprawl, and vision of the Woodward Corridor (which never really lost as much juice as the rest of the city) as the backbone of a revitalized Detroit, if we recognize and nurture it as an existing linear community.)

Jessica Care Moore, Poet and Detroiter | Well, Jessica knocked us out at TEDx Detroit, and she did it again last night, with an impassioned urban roll call, a sure-tongued naming of the things that no longer work in our cities or never did

"...the deadbeat dad is now obsolete..."

And calling on

"...we who knew New Orleans before she was renamed Katrina and dispersed across the country..."

to build a new world from the ruins and lessons of the old

"...because my four year old has a dream. Make it a reality..."

She ended by looking into the audience and saying,

"...in this room, I see ideas everywhere. Do you?"

(I live tweeted her deadbeat dads line, and got followed by the Twitter account for @CrappyDads.com. Check it out.)

Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist.org | Craig was interviewed onstage by Gary Bolles, and told us that 60 million people per month visit craigslist.org. That's not enough for him, since he's "trying to connect everyone on the planet."

Clearly, he knows a lot about getting people connected. And he thinks a lot about what connected people can do.

Newmark shared a vision of crowdsourcing technologies changing politics and business as usual. Identifying responsible journalism, bringing accountability to politicians, and rating charities for effectiveness and calling out fakes. Using connectedness to make a very large world safer in the way that a small world is safe: miscreants have fewer places to hide, and the powerful are kept in check because they can't insulate themselves from accountability. (Did I get that right, Craig?)

Craig notes that The Daily Show has become arguably the only reliable mainstream news source, and it's comedy. Because, "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, " and, "If you're funny, you can say things that would otherwise get you killed."

Newmark also sees himself as doing customer service for a living at craigslist.org. And with 60 million users every month and so few problems, his faith in humanity is restored. So go out and connect.

Lisa Gansky, author of "The Mesh" | Last up was the immanently quotable Lisa Gansky. In fact, she's a one-woman sound bite machine, so I'm just going to step aside:

"The future is about sharing. We come from a long history of sharing."

Gansky shows a picture of planet earth and calls it, "The mother of all sharing platforms."

"Access trumps ownership. It's the new culture of sharing."

(At this point @lmorchard tweets me, "@tunie of course the problem with access over ownership is that someone controls and can revoke your access." Heh, now visions of Zuckerbook dance in my head.)

"We're more connected to more people on the planet than ever before, except if you're sitting next to someone."

"A brand is the voice and the product is a souvenir."

"Zipcar is not a car company, it's an information company."

"One of the biggest benefits of connectedness is sharing failures as well as successes."

"Where artists and innovators engage, cities thrive."

It was an inspiring evening, and a nice companion event to the larger, freewheeling and more exuberant TEDx Detroit last fall. Many thanks to Lincoln, TED Global Partnerships, and Gary Bolles for everything that went into this event, and @CharlieCurve cuz I bet he was involved, too.

See a gallery of pics from @SlayterCreative here: http://bit.ly/eTOBUH and from @wguru here: http://bit.ly/hH9xfW.

And great writeups from @BecksDavis here: http://bit.ly/g02Szk and @SlayterCreative (with thoughts on the marketing angle) here: http://bit.ly/icbN and @CGJohnson here: http://bit.ly/flxYmo and a New York Times article here: http://nyti.ms/g9Cn3 and the writeup on the TED.com blog: http://on.ted.com/8pOM.

Unmarketing, Uncensored: 12 Things I Learned from Scott Stratten

2010-10-10T01:44:00.009-04:00

Author Scott Stratten (@unmarketing on Twitter) came to town recently to speak to Social Media Club Detroit while on tour promoting his excellent new book titled, of course, Unmarketing.

The best part about Scott Stratten is that he tells it like it is, whether you want to hear it or not. Before I knew he was a blogger and author, I remember coming across this tweet from him:

"When I see a tweet and it says "via Twitterfeed" (auto tweet program) I feel all unfollowey

Yeah, I thought! Me, too! And this tweet perfectly illustrates the foundation of Stratten's philosophy: If you want to be an effective social media marketer, first be a real social media user. Then, remain one.

Here are some of my favorite nuggets of social media wisdom gleaned from Scott's talk:

1. Twitter is people, and social media is talking. Forget this at your peril.

2. People do business with people they know, like and trust. This hasn't changed in hundreds of years. Social media is a way of getting to know, like and trust people online. Read more...

3. That said, still: nothing beats face-to-face interaction for building relationships. Social media's real job is to enhance face-to-face.

4. People turn first to someone they know when choosing with whom to do business. Google is only a last resort when they don't already know anybody in that sphere.

5. Automated social media "engagement" is stupid because it utterly fails at building relationships. It's amazing that many people/businesses still do not understand this.

6. ROI is overrated. Do we ask, what's the ROI of meeting and talking to people? Then, why are we obsessed with the ROI of social media? The return for Stratten was a book deal, speaking engagements, and free shoes (ask him about that one). A numbers-obsessed CMO would have pulled the plug on @unmarketing long before any of this ever happened.

7. News for CMOs: you can't shortcut relationships, they take time.

8. We all have ADD online. Comment moderation and Captcha stop sharing in its tracks. Disable these features and just delete spam by hand if you get it. Make it easy for people to share your content with Like buttons, Tweet buttons, and so forth. Easy mobile sharing is critical.

9. The only SEO secret is great content. And the secret to "going viral"? Make it awesome. People spread awesome.

10. Consistency and quality are key to social media success. You have to be present on a regular basis, and then genuinely engage. Stratten decided at one point to really work Twitter for one month and see what happened. He tweeted 7,000 times that month, and went from 1,200 to 10,000 followers.

11. Blogging frequency is not as important as authenticity. The minute you phone in a post, your blog starts to suck.

12. Power tweeting tips for authentic tweeters: Tweet 35x/day for real results, fast. Create standalone tweets amongst your RTs and @replies. Always leave room for others to RT, especially when you tweet something sharable. If you have a really good tweet, it's OK to favorite it, change it up a little, and recycle it from time to time. It's fine to tweet something at a couple different times to reach different audiences. Don't rely too much on queuing tweets for later delivery; it's much better to be present if a conversation starts.

And remember: Twitterfeed, SocialOomph and auto DMs make most of us feel a little, well, unfollowey.

Businesses, You're Already on Foursquare. Why Not Engage?

2010-06-29T00:58:00.003-04:00

Working on a social media proposal for a bank today, I mentioned Foursquare in passing while concentrating on how they could leverage other platforms such a YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Start with the basics.

Then, after reading this great post, I looked the client up on Foursquare and found that one of their branches was indeed there, with 2 visitors, each with about 20 friends. Which drives home the oft-quoted truism that companies already are in the social media space, whether they are participating or not. So why not join the conversation?

There's nothing inherently exciting or interesting about a neighborhood bank branch, yet with no effort on the part of the client, Foursquare had generated 42 impressions for them. How many more people could they reach with some effort? How easy would it be to tie some messaging to those impressions?

Think about how targeted and qualified the audience is. People who are checking in at the bank on Foursquare are already clients, who might be interested in other financial products. Their friends are most likely local, too, and are excellent potential customers.

Why not have a Foursquare promotion with a small giveaway on first check-in, say, a pen... imprinted with Interest Checking - No Fees! It's highly likely that this will generate comments specifically mentioning the Interest Checking pen, and if the promotion gets even 30 more unique visitors checking in from Foursquare, with 20 friends apiece, that's 672 qualified potential customers who get the Interest Checking message.

And that's just one idea.

Yahoo Email Hack Strikes Again

2010-06-21T16:44:00.009-04:00

Update on my Yahoo email: It got hacked again, June 20 around 10pm. I had deleted my contacts after the first hack, so apparently only one spam email was sent, to myself, from myself. I would have gotten some bounce messages like last time otherwise. The spam was for Viagra. I was again able to log in and change the password.

Here's my original blog post for the back story on my Yahoo email hack ordeal.

Interestingly, after the first hack I changed my password to a 14 character mouthful of gravel from strongpasswordgenerator.com. There is no way any password program could have cracked that password. Obviously there are security issues at Yahoo. Read more...

FWIW, my friend the programmer says Yahoo as an organization is disintegrating, nobody's minding the store. Yahoo is not serious about security. From word of mouth in my circle and on Twitter, increasing numbers of friends are getting their Yahoo accounts hacked, and there are a variety of spams/scams that occur as a result of the hack.

He says that in hacker world, there is most certainly a known exploit in the Yahoo security system that sociopathic programmers are right now using to generate newer and more sophisticated programs to harvest Yahoo email accounts. They are programming away as we post. More and more spammers/identity thieves/sickos will jump on this bandwagon with various motives and objectives. This will continue to happen until Yahoo fixes the exploit, but we have seen from this thread that Yahoo neither acknowledges nor is really serious about fixing it.

Bottom line, switch to gmail.

Anyway, I still have my Yahoo account open, but it is stripped. No saved emails anywhere, no contacts except for myself (so i can get the spam when I am hacked again). I am leaving it open to receive the large amount of email I still get to that account, and notify people as needed to use another account to contact me. I delete emails as as soon as I get them and then empty the trash. And delete any sent emails as soon as they are sent.

If you want to still keep your Yahoo account open for some reason, here are some precautions:

--Strip the account of your personal info. Real name, address, anything. Birthday. Really poke around in Yahoo. You may be surprised at the information you have given them.

--See what security questions you've given yahoo. Change them to inaccurate answers and write them down somewhere so you don't forget.

--Strip the account of all folders, inbox, sent emails, drafts, everything. You don't want them havng the verification code for your gmail account, or worse.

--Double delete your contacts. Even if deleted, they are still there. Poke around in the contacts pane.

--Did you ever pay Yahoo for anything? Mail Plus? Personals? Pay Flickr Pro through Yahoo? Then you have a Yahoo Wallet. This is bad. Find it and strip it of credit card info.

--Um, you don't have Yahoo Paypal Checkout or Yahoo Express Checkout through My Yahoo, do you? Well, now they do, too.

--What email address did you give Yahoo as your password recovery address? Is that a secure provider? Does that account have a unique, very strong password?

Good luck with your email hack!

Update June 28, 2010: This September, 2009 article from SC Magazine finally explains the Yahoo email hacks. The timing of the article matches the appearance and escalation of these hacks as determined by Google and Twitter search.

In Which My Yahoo Email Gets Hacked

2010-06-14T17:44:00.010-04:00

My Yahoo email account got hacked, and Viagra spam was sent to all my contacts. Even the ones who don't need it.

I knew right away, because I am one of my own contacts, so I sent myself spam, plus got some bounced email notices in my inbox. I was able to log into Yahoo with my old password, and changed the password, and the Yahoo password recovery email address.

Then I set about changing all my passwords everywhere online, since the hacked account had my favorite password attached to it, as well as my favorite username. Dumb, dumb, dumb to use same username and password everywhere, I know! BTW, the password was pretty strong, but not super strong. This took 9 hours! I changed usernames where possible, passwords everywhere (using http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/) and linked online accounts to my gmail account, not yahoo email. Read more...

They sent the spam out using the Yahoo web interface, my computer's email client was not involved. I could tell because my yahoo online contacts are different than my computer's email contacts.

A Twitter search reveals that this has been happening to people since around the first of the year, and that there is a rash of recent hacks going on right now. Strangely, Googling the issue reveals nothing of substance: a bunch of utterly lame Yahoo Answers posts appear at the top of organic search. On the second page is this blog post from March 2010, the only post I could find with actual content regarding this problem. On the second page! What's with that?

Yahoo knows enough about search to bury real content about this problem under a pile of fake Yahoo Answers. The comment string to this post, still going strong 3 months later, reveals a stunning lack of concern and blatant stonewalling from Yahoo.

Some responders claim evidence that the problem is with Yahoo servers being hacked. Many report that their Facebook accounts were hacked as well. The spam being sent includes viagra links (I assume, I did not click... the url contained medsonline in it), or some blather about a good price on an iPhone with a link, or something about an online gift-buying site and a link.

I'm on a Mac, so it was not a virus, and I know phishing when I see it. Either something's going on at Yahoo, as others have suggested, or security was compromised at some other site where I use that username and password, and the password thieves took that username and password straight to Yahoo to see if it worked, and of course, it did. They probably would have tried Facebook next, but I beat them to it.

The contents of my online Yahoo inbox were gone, and there was no record of the sent spam in my sent mail, but my old sent mails were still there, as was my online contact list. Others report that their online contact list is gone. Some report that they can see the sent spam in their online sent box. A lot of them report that both their Facebook and Yahoo were hacked, and they suspect Facebook as the source of the breach, however I think Yahoo is breached first and then they try Facebook. A lot of them report that their Yahoo mail is broken into again in a few days, even though they changed the password.

Again, my Yahoo password was the same as my Facebook password, as well as for a LOT of other sites I'm on, which again, IS DUMB! My Facebook was not hacked, though, it definitely started with Yahoo. No other accounts appear to be compromised, but then, I was quick to respond to the initial email hack.

I will be closing my Yahoo account soon. Their non-responsiveness to this is inexcusable, whether their server is or is not the source of the hack. They should at least give people steps on how to secure themselves after a hack, but they are obviously more concerned with burying the problem.

Anyway, I can't stress enough using strong passwords, and a different password for every site. And don't use yahoo email addresses for password recovery, if you use yahoo email at all.

Keep a text record of all sites where you are registered, with usernames, passwords, and associated email addresses, and whether or not there is a credit card on file, and print this out as well. I had a list that I was able to work from and it helped immensely.

If you get hacked, do this:

First, login to Yahoo and change your password, thus kicking them out long enough for you to work on this
Think hard about where else you may have used that same password, and/or username and secure those sites right away by changing passwords.
Secure sites in descending order of importance: financial sites first, then Facebook, then anything that may have a live credit card number attached, your other email like hotmail or gmail, then your blogs and social media, and so on down the line.
Use http://www.StrongPasswordGenerator.con to create unhackable passwords
USE DIFFERENT PASSWORD FOR EVERY SITE. Yes, I am yelling at you. I wish someone had yelled at me!
Then, determine what sites are linked to your compromised yahoo email and link them to another email account. Sites use it as your password recovery email address, and someone in control of your Yahoo account can set new passwords and take over your other accounts.
What other email address did you give Yahoo as a password recovery email? Thieves now have that info, so you might want to make double sure that email has not been hacked, and is secured with a strong, unique password.
Take a look at your Yahoo profile. What information did you give them about yourself? Well, somebody else now has that information. All of it. What secret questions and answers did you give Yahoo for security? They have that, too. Hopefully you use different security questions on every site that asks for one. Think about all that for a minute. Think about identity theft.
Now, go back and clean out all your other profiles, deleting any information about yourself that is not required.
If your Yahoo email address is also your favorite username, go back and change usernames at sites which allow you to do that.

My list reflects that I wanted to secure critical sites with a new password first, and then go back and fine tune security everywhere. Good luck and hope this helps!

The Evolution of Spam in the Twitter Ecosystem

2010-06-09T19:02:00.012-04:00

Like hospital staph infections, spam evolves in response to our efforts to recognize and control it.

2009 saw the rise and fall of the Twitter porn bot. If y'all remember, this was the hot avatar with a handle along the lines of "@amber1988". The formula was girl's name followed by the year that she would be born in to be young and attractive. Then "she" would follow you, and if you clicked on the profile, there's be just one tweet linking to what was undoubtedly a heinous porn site.

Really, I never clicked!

At the time, in frustration I tweeted, "I'm going to create a profile called @mildred1933 and see who follows me." At least I made myself chuckle!

Twitter cracked down on this, and pretty soon I found the profiles pulled even before I could click on them to block. Good job, Twitter!

The latest twist on twitter spam are the affiliate marketing linkbots.

There are two kinds: Mr. Inspirational Quote and Ms. Newsfeed. Both often use avatars that include a child in the photo (aww, he's a Dad!). The profile description is brief and generic, or nonexistent. Often something about liking to "help people". Right.

Anyway, their MO is this. Their twitter feed contains about 10 or so inspirational quotes, or 10 breaking news stories with links, followed by the affiliate marketing link that the bot wants you to click on to line their pockets. I say affiliate marketing link because that is the best case scenario. At best it's a spam link, at worst, it may contain malware and cross-site scripting nonsense.

Really, I've never clicked!

So when you go to the profile to decide whether to follow back, it may look like a legitimate twitter user, if you don't scroll down and notice that every 10th tweet is the same spammy link.

They set this up by hooking up a Google news feed (or feed of quotes) to HootSuite, inserting the spam link at intervals. One of my LinkedIn Social Media group discussions contained a detailed how-to. Thankfully, other members of the group challenged the ethics and effectiveness of this tactic.

Recently, there was a spate of bot profiles created, often based in Mumbai, with the same description: "Soccer mom who loves to dance the salsa." Oh. You're a Soccer Mom. Well, in that case, I am more than willing to let you feed me a garbage queue of spam links! I got followed by two of these in one day, as did many other twitter users who tweeted, "Hey, what's with all the soccer moms?"

Amazingly, Twitter has not disabled the accounts. Amazingly, the account pictured above has 12,400 followers and has tweeted close to 2,000 spammy links.

C'mon, @twitter, shut it down. And people, wise up and hit "block and report for spam" when you see this stuff.

How Twitter Killed My Career in Advertising

2009-04-03T23:09:00.017-04:00

I guess you could say that Twitter killed my career in advertising.

Flashback to a year ago, when I first started tweeting as @tunie. I was still working at the agency, as the Michigan economy slowly ground to a halt. Some clients disappeared altogether, others were slashing budgets. We figured survival was a matter of concentrating on winning new business in some of the healthier market sectors. Nobody'd heard of "social media", not me, not us, not our clients, not the other agencies, and digital marketing meant having a website and maybe an online contest. YouTube was still less than 2 years old. Certainly, nobody knew what Twitter was.

Twitter didn't even seem like a big deal to those of us on it. It was kind of like our weird little passion, hard to explain to others.

Anyway, a strange thing began to happen. Compared to what was going on at the agency, Twitter, the people I was meeting, and the things I was learning there, seemed much more relevant and exciting.

Through Twitter, I met people who were running online newspapers, people who gathered for microcoworking, people who were creating a citywide wireless network. I got to know bloggers and online entrepreneurs. I started reading links from my well-informed Twitterfriends... and slowly got a glimmer of a clue. I learned about and attended a Startup Weekend and helped launch a business. I reconnected with old friends in the Ann Arbor high-tech world, and they suddenly seemed very much aligned with my interests as a designer/marketer, whereas before, they seemed to inhabit a different universe.

Meantime, mainstream marketing wasn't keeping up. Companies wanted brochureware sites based on their org charts and full of opaque acronyms. Oh, and it has to be a Flash site. It didn't feel right, and it wasn't fun anymore.

But I couldn't quite put my finger on what felt wrong about it. I couldn't see yet that marketing was about to change. I figured it was just me, some personal sea change, spurred by the tough economic climate.

And then... I immersed myself in the new world that Twitter introduced me to. I've spent the last several months helping entrepreneurs launch, learning WordPress and other blogging platforms, starting several blogs, reading A-list bloggers like Chris Brogan and David Meerman Scott, evangelizing and getting a couple good friends blogging. I've done really satisfying web design, taken classes in HTML and CSS, learned about web platforms like Ruby and Drupal, and dabbled in coding and webapp development. Got some major buzz for partnering with @bigeasy on the Twitter robocall tracker mashup. I've learned about keyword rich copy. SEO, and PPC advertising, attended seminars at Google, and am happily addicted to Google Analytics. I've been attending Meetups and joining groups devoted to digital marketing and social media, new tech and entrepreneurship. I know how to deploy e-books, video, corporate blogs and web PR. I've built and fine-tuned a social media presence across many sites, and I own Google page one for my name. Now I'm working on owning Google page one for... hmmm, I'm not sure what just yet, but I sure as hell know exactly how to go about it!

And I'm putting everything I've learned to work for my entrepreneur clients, for myself, and for my friends that I want to bring along with me, who are too valuable to be left behind.

And I'm excited about advertising and marketing again.

Spec Work: The Word is Sleazy

2009-03-27T02:15:00.013-04:00

Some recent sightings of the spec work specter.

Spotted on Monster.com: A post for a salary-plus-commission corporate Web Marketing Director. Pay tied to results.

And, for good measure, the application process involves drafting and submitting an online marketing strategy for the company. I kid you not, read for yourself:

"Web marketing specialist. We are looking for an experienced individual to drive business to our retail website. This a salary position, but terms of employment are performance based. Duties include: Search engine optimization, website editing, monitoring competition, creating measurable promotions. Ideal applicants will have experience with .html, .php., .asp, etc.

Qualified applicants will be asked to submit a brief analysis of our site, our competition, and outline some basic ideas on how to increase traffic and business on the web."

And recently some idiot was trying to fire up the Mechanical Turk to do logo design for him on craigslist. Good luck with that.

And then, of course, there's crowdspring .com and the American Idol model for sourcing design work. (Designers "compete" by submitting designs, and the winner gets underpaid.)

And yes, I agree with Andrew Hyde that spec work is evil. And unsustainable. As in, nice try, Crowdspring guys, to aggregate and then sell access to suckers, but.... no.

Why do companies think this will work? Why would anyone labor 40/hrs per week at your headquarters doing marketing work for subsistence plus tips? Why is anyone going to sit down and do design work as part of a contest in which, if they win... woo-hoo!... they get paid?

Especially when they can do digital marketing and design work on behalf of their own online enterprise. That way, they get 100% commission on the resulting sales. The barriers to entry to enterprise are now negligible to nonexistent. Working for themselves for a deferred payout makes a lot more sense than working for you.

Companies, get real. Paying people little to nothing and/or dangling small carrots is not going to motivate them to labor on your behalf.

The Social Web Reaches Critical Mass

2009-03-25T22:38:00.025-04:00

The cultural shift online has reached critical mass, the revolution is here.

Here in Ann Arbor, our local newspaper's demise was the wake-up call. Yeah, some folks still think it has something to do with the economy, and God knows, a lot of what's going on in Michigan does.

But not this. The Ann Arbor News is a casualty of a broken business model.

And the first of many to come. Down the road about 45 miles, trade magazine publisher Crain Communications (where I worked for 10 years in the 1990s) is also laying off workers and closing books. And, for once, it's not the economy, stupid. Not really.

I'm also noticing critical mass on Facebook... within the last 3 weeks, I've reconnected with several old school friends and coworkers, all of us... ahem... of a certain age. And all of a sudden my Facebook account matters to me, and it's a place where I check in every day.

Although by no means a social media early adopter by the standards of most people reading this, I have been active on twitter for a year or so. Suddenly I am getting a steady stream of new followers, several a day. Which is remarkable, considering I'm not a power tweeter with follows in the thousands. I've always kept it to about 100 mutual follows, give or take. But in just the last couple weeks my follower count has more than doubled.

It's just because there are so many new users on twitter.

There's a great video that made the rounds, [We're Living in] Exponential Times. It's pretty amazing.

And consider that even geometric progressions can be staggeringly rapid: it feels as if we're at the point where 50 percent is poised to double... and then it's all over. It's happened. A done deal.

Clay Shirky's great blog post, Newspapers: Thinking the Unthinkable, compares the enormous cultural changes triggered by Gutenberg's invention to what's happening right now. Just as technology that allows anybody to publish changes things irrevocably, so does technology that allows everybody to publish.

Another One Bites The Dust

2009-03-23T13:24:00.032-04:00

The Ann Arbor News announced that it will close in July. It will reinvent itself as AnnArbor.com.

The AnnArbor.com page, as of today, consists of a statement of intent to build relevant content for the community, both readers and advertisers. Poignantly, and with searing honesty, it says:

"We’re not only soliciting your input on the site, we need it. AnnArbor.com will be built from the ground up, so you can help create what it becomes."

Here's a major small-city newspaper who has played the Armageddon card and is now trying to rebuild from scorched earth. Starting with nothing, not even their name.

Consider that established sites like The Huffington Post that have succeeded in providing relevant and widely read online journalism have yet to build a sustainable profit model based on that content.

But the fact that this new incarnation of the A2 News is willing to start with a publicly blank slate, inviting their audience to participate in their re-creation, is pretty unprecedented. And commendable.

So, the field is now wide open. Mary Morgan's Ann Arbor Chronicle has a head start. As does Steve Pierce's YpsiNews.com. These independents have readership, and are operated by some of the community's most tech-savvy people, who "get it". Even if they, like most of us, may not know exactly where it's going. My impression is that Mary and Steve are publishing to fill a community need, because they are smart and they can, and maybe to create a modest revenue stream. But not necessarily to recreate the big-profit publishing model online.

The Ann Arbor News' existing online presence, Mlive.com, is widely read, but obviously not as profitable as it needs to be to sustain parent company Booth Publishing. Maybe the crux of the matter is that journalism can no longer sustain large enterprise.

Today's twitterstream surfaced a couple of great observations: there are still plenty of people who don't really know, or want to know, how to get local news online. And there are still plenty of businesses that can't imagine any other way to advertise. Take the newspaper away, and these folks lose a lifeline.

But we've reached a point where connecting Luddite constituencies is not enough to keep the newspapers profitable.

We're living in interesting times.

Helping Entrepreneurs Launch

2009-03-23T00:28:00.006-04:00

New businesses are popping up like spring bulbs lately. This being Michigan, people have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Many of these folks are funded by their own savings, and are hard-pressed to afford even a small design agency's services.

The first thing they need is a logo. Then business cards. Maybe a print flyer, but probably not. And then, a website. And marketing 2.0 advice along the way. I'm great at this!

The small business launch formula seems to be logo/bizcards/web... then, presto, they're up and running. Pretty simple, really. No campaigns, no expensive media buys, no sales staff. Barriers to entry to the marketplace have come down. And their web presence can be basic at first, then grow and evolve as it needs to. And the initial small revenue stream generated can fund growth.

Working with entrepreneurs is fun, it's a low-cost lab where we can test the new online marketing strategies, and it's gratifying to help local people affordably launch new businesses.

Advertising Creative Director... NOT!

2009-03-22T23:36:00.023-04:00

Lately I've noticed that when people ask me what I do for a living, I am stumped.

A year ago, I was quite content to say I was an Advertising Creative Director. Now, I really choke on that.

"Great creative" now means great content. Push marketing (advertising) is losing relevance to pull marketing (search). Marketing copy is being replaced by something approaching genuine journalism.

Ad campaigns are less relevant than useful, searchable information.

The web is different, and the old advertising and marketing formulas don't work online.

"Lack" campaigns... where you neg your audience, then offer your product as a solution to the implied problem, are impossible to pull off in a world where customers with real, self-identified problems reflexively go online to solve them.

"Aspirational" campaigns where gorgeous people are depicted doing enviable things just don't work at 200 pixels wide and 72 dpi. Tiny, little, low-res people don't make anyone want to be them.

"Shock" campaigns, the kind that always dominated the award annuals, where you essentially flash your audience with the company logo tattooed on your, er, marketing vehicle, are annoying on the web.

Interruption marketing is intolerable online. "Sell" copy is unbearable, like a bore at the party. It doesn't take much effort to click away, and people do.

And with broadcast and publishing breaking down, there are fewer and fewer places to reach people offline.

So where does that leave me as an "award-winning advertising creative director"?

I'm not sure what parts of my skillset are still useful. Maybe the most important thing is that I know what doesn't work anymore.

Is Advertising Broken?

2009-03-22T22:38:00.016-04:00

I've been talking to people a lot about how many of the old business models are broken.

The recording industry went first. And now, broadcast and publishing... and with it, advertising. And I've been thinking, reading, and talking with people about how the move away from old-school push advertising is affecting marketing.

What amazes me is how uninterested in these changes most traditional marketing people are. It's truly astonishing. There is no curiosity about social media, blogging, search ranking and search marketing, and the content-rich web... they're still stuck in the days of direct mail, billboards, tv, radio and print. Some even argue vociferously that nothing is really changing.

Agencies and marketing professionals, who need to be be on top of these shifts in order to do their jobs, are almost clueless. Many of the companies they work for, and with, are clueless as well.

I think to them it sounds like "blah blah blah Facebook blah blah blah". They think it's just kid stuff that they don't have to concern themselves with.

This blindness and lack of interest among marketing professionals may sound unbelievable, but I kid you not. I see a great divide, and I see it widening rapidly. It may already be too late for some to find a way across.